FRAMING DEVELOPMENT JUSTICE

Invitation in Bengali for National Consultation

Brac Centre Inn Auditorium, Moakhali, Dhaka | 10:00 am | 30 October 2013

Women in Readymade Garment (RMG) sector of Bangladesh

2013 Asia Pacific National Consultation with Special Procedures Mandate Holders n the Women in Readymade Garment (RMG) sector

As part of APWLD’s commitment for strengthening the knowledge and capacity of women’s rights advocates to engage with and understand international processes, standards and norms, it has included an Interactive Session on International Human Rights Mechanisms. This will be done through the activity “UN Tour” that has recently updated and now used in key activities of APWLD.

CONTEXT: GLOBAL INEQUALITIES

The global model of development is not working for women, especially for rural, indigenous and migrant women of the Asia Pacific.

As recognised in the Rio+20 document, ‘The Future We Want’, the world is experiencing unprecedented, multiple, interrelated crises in economy, energy, food, environment, and climate. Women experience these crises most acutely. The world is now more unequal than ever before. The top 1% owns more than 40% of global assets and wealth whiles the bottom 50% of the world share barely 1%i. Unregulated growth models have proven to be environmentally disastrous – promoting unsustainable resource extraction, large scale land grabbing and agro-business and fuelling global warming. The model has particularly failed rural, indigenous and migrant women who bear the brunt of unsustainable economic growth and environmental disasters despite the fact that they are least responsible.

The development framework that has dominated approaches for the past 30 years, led by the international financial institutions and Northern donors, has stimulated economic growth by de-regulating government intervention, privatising public assets and encouraging foreign direct investment and free trade. It has assumed the ‘trickle down’ impact of wealth generated, yet it is increasingly evident that this work has failed to eradicate poverty and has instead magnified inequalities in wealth, power and resources between countries, between the rich and the poor and between men and women.

Women in Asia have shouldered the burden of economic growth providing cheap, flexible labour to fuel demands for cheap consumption. While women’s labour force participation in some countries has grown, the majority of women in the region works in the informal sector and earns starvation wages.

National Consultation on the Women in Readymade Garment (RMG) sector of Bangladesh

It is a reality today that the garment industry in Bangladesh is at the heart of the country’s export boom and has remained so ever since the first factory opened in 1976. The industry has grown dramatically over the past 35 years, and today accounts for 80% of Bangladesh’s total exports. There are now 4,825 garment factories in Bangladesh employing over three million people. This sector at present attracts the largest Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) of more than $1,000 million (CHECK THE LATEST FIGURE) compared to $2.4 million in 1986. Today, one third of foreign direct investment comes from European companies, principally from the UK.

Women as main work force:

Women are the main workforce of this sector. Almost 90 percent of this workforce is women. Facing hardship and poverty, these women who are often illiterate or having less than primary level education come to urban areas in search of work in garment factories for better living conditions. At this stage it is pertinent to ask the question whether their condition is improving to be workers of the billion dollar industry.

Condition of Women Garment Workers:      

The condition of Woman Garment workers can be looked in different sectors. These are:

a.                 Professional sectors

b.                Income and economic sectors

c.                 Social-political sectors

d.                Occupational Hazards and Safety

1.             Condition of Women in Professional Sector:

It is to be noted that in most cases the employers engage garment workers, mainly women, in the factory without any formal agreement or job contract. Thus they can be easily hired and fired and no compensation is offered when they are laid off in the interest of factory owners. As for example, many factory owners because of their failure to meet the deadline of shipment or on becoming loan defaulters close their factories leaving the garment workers in utmost uncertainties of which the women are the main sufferers. However, Bangladesh has recently amended the Labour Law in 2013, which protects the fundamental rights of women workers, including the right to maternity leave.  At the international level,Bangladesh has ratified the UN Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW), as well as ILO Convention 111 on Discrimination in Employment and Occupation. The reality is that, despite such legislation, women workers’ rights remain ignored in the Garment sector. Women workers are employed in poorly paid jobs facing severe labour rights violations and do not get their legal entitlements. They are also forced to work at night often exceeding 10 working hours which is a violation of the labor standard.

2.                Condition of Women in Income and Economic sectors:

As has been said earlier, women are poorly paid in this sector. As a result of sustained campaigning by women workers, women rights and human rights activists and other trade unionists in Bangladesh, the minimum wage for garment workers was raised in 2010 for the first time in four years. Receipt of wages in the garment industry depends on meeting an assigned production target. If production targets are met, a sewing operator’s salary now starts at 3,861 taka (approximately £32) a month and a helper’s wage at 3,000 taka (£25) a month. This amount is inadequate in meeting the minimum living standards in the urban areas. Besides the above,  they get no other benefits or festival allowances.

3.                Condition of Women Garment Workers in Social-political sectors

Women garment workers are also disadvantaged socially and politically. As for example, they face problem in the areas of accommodation, transport, and access to health treatment. Most of them are living in the urban slums and they have no access to government social protection measures like VGD and VGF cards in rural areas. They also have no right to form labor/trade union and therefore politically they have no power and voice to bargain with the factory owners. Existing situation also deter them from getting involved in any right based activities for their well being.

4.                Women’s Occupational Hazards and Safety

Fire at Tazreen Garment Factory has caused  death to 112 garment workers and the collapse of Rana Plaza to over 1000. These reveal the bizarre working conditions in Garment factories of Bangladesh. Apparently, their safety is nobody’s concern. Neither the apparel retailers nor the factory owners take proper measures to ensure that such untoward incidences do not occur at their factories.

But in spite of all these loopholes in this sector, and that cheap labor is the main driver of the sector’s growth, it is also fair to say that this growth has provided economic opportunities to millions of women who would have very few other options to escape extreme poverty. The garment sector, despite an extremely-low paying industry, has positively transformed the lives of many women in Bangladesh by providing economic empowerment. It is most important at this moment to ensure a safe working environment for the women workers where they can exercise their rights fully and satisfactorily.